The Breiðamerkr, rolling down towards the ocean, kept up by pressure from behind, and showing the usual glorious tints of sapphire-blue and emerald-green, was a model to its kind.
About sunset the scene again shifted. A false shore of lagoon and sand-strips, varying from a mile to a hundred yards in breadth, is broken by a headland, the giants of Vestrahorn—Whydah and Jan Mayen side by side. To the north lies Papós, pope’s or priest’s oyce, the mouth of Papafjörð, which in the Brazil would be called a mar pequeno, fed by drainage from the highlands, meeting the ocean-tide. This unsafe anchorage is the only riding ground for ships along the southern and south-eastern coast, between Eyrarbakki and Djúpivogr. Formerly the peasantry had a week’s journey to the comptoir of Berufjörð, but in 1862-63 Hr Jonssen, a Dane, established a trading station. Beyond Papós rises the five-crested top of the Eystrahorn ridge, a wild and savage spectacle which, being gradually wrapped in a winding-sheet of vapour solid as an ice-fog, ended the glories of the day. Our fellow-passengers wished us Berufjörðians bon voyage—we were to reach our destination at dawn.
But the kindly hope came too soon. July 19 opened with one of those calm and clammy “Scotch mists,” for which all this part of the coast is infamous as Newfoundland, and no wonder, when it lies to leeward of a Jökull-land, covering some 3000 square miles. “Diana” was bound to wait forty-eight hours before she carried us away southwards, but she did so grumblingly: naval officers in Denmark, as in England, may be deterred by undue blame from undertaking the least possible responsibility. Indeed a protest has been proposed against even visiting Berufjörð. Although we saw the loom of the land, we did the very worst thing we could do, steaming slowly to and fro between the twins Selsker and Papey, where the bottom is foul with hidden rocks. The coast between Berufjörð and its southern neighbour, Hamarsfjörð, the latter so called from its hammerhead of perpendicular cliff, is an infinite complication of small, black islets, useful only to eider-ducks, and a
“tortuous labyrinth of seas
That shine around these Arctic Cyclades.”
We inquired vainly for the apocryphal Kuggr (“cog,” or small fishing-craft) of the maps, Gunnlaugsson’s included, which is represented only by a shoaling of some six fathoms. We afterwards saw the little lump of Geirfuglasker or Hvalsbak,[132] distant about twelve miles. It was described to me as a rock forty fathoms long and about the height of a ship’s deck, rising from very deep water. Yet it begat the large Enchuysen Island of the Dutch. This modern representation of the Islanda of the Zeni Brothers was perpetuated in Maury’s Wind and Current Charts (3d edit., 1849) and in the Enkhuysen Island of Laurie (1862), who cut off 120 miles (= 2°) from the eastern coast of Iceland. It is a worse case than in olden Ireland, where “the sly surveyors stole a shire.”
It is interesting to observe how the country has retained the names of the Papar. These white-robed “anchorites,” as they are generally called, must first have settled in the island (Papey), and the Ystoria Norwegiæ tells us, “Adhuc quædam insula Papey ab illis denominatur.” They then took courage to explore the coast lying south-west, entered the Papafjörð by the Papós and, passing towards the warm Auster, founded the monastery of Kirkjubær, on the Skaptárós, not far from the point where, in after-ages, Hjörleif landed. We must therefore differ from a modern writer (Edinburgh Review, viii., note, p. 243) who says, “It appears that some wrong-headed monks, either by stress of weather, or by design (for the perfection of religion was supposed to consist in rendering themselves useless by withdrawing from society), had actually sailed to Iceland where they settled, it being most probable impossible for them to find their way back again.” The Papar were no castaways; they kept up, as Dicuil has shown, connection with the mother country; and the Landnámabók, at the end of the Prologus, mentioning both Papey and Papýli or Pappýli (i.e., Paparbýli or pagus), says, “It is related in English books that men fared often from one land to the other.”
Another interesting remark is that whatever way we approach Iceland from Europe, south-east, south, or south-west, we find some islet or needle named Geirfugl, and this connected with the “Gare”-fowl (Alca impennis, Linn.), an ancient and almost forgotten term for the great auk, revived by Messrs Wolley and Newton.[133] This northern “Roc,” Dodo, or Moa (Dinornis gigantea),[134] is sketched by Paijkull in the shape of a three-foot penguin; and according to Professor Steenstrŭp, supported by Mr Newton, it was confined to the Polar regions, or, indeed, to the far north. The Icelanders believe it to be blind (Blind-fuglasker), an opinion not shared by the Norwegians and the Færoese. Mr Newton advised me, in case of success, not to follow the usual system of skinning the birds, and blowing the eggs, but to treat the former with pyroligneous acid, which mummifies the meat, and to preserve the latter in spirits after being coated with paraffin or stearine: thus they would be useful for embryological and other investigations.
The unwieldy bird, common till 1834, was killed off for its meat and feathers, and the last eggs were taken from Eldey (the meal-sack) and the Geirfugladrángr in 1844. Mr Newton suggested a visit to these needles, and Mr R. Buist kindly directed the “Queen” to touch at them; but the weather made a visit impossible. He also advised an exploration of the Geirfuglasker, the south-westernmost skerries of the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago, and others spoke of the Geirfuglasker or Hvalsbak, east of Berufjörð. But the old Icelandic fiery spirit of adventure, all but burnt out under normal circumstances, flames high when the fuel of rixdollars is liberally applied. Geir Zoega of Reykjavik assured me that the Eldey and the Auk-Needle off Reykjanes had been repeatedly visited by fishermen since 1844, the date of the last find;[135] and, though Hr Grímr Thomsen of Bessastaðir “begged to differ in opinion,” the destruction of the bird during the last twenty years proves that the people have been in the habit of hunting it. Of the Hvalsbak I was told that though auks may have been seen there, the breach of the sea would have prevented their nesting and breeding. Remains only the Gare-fowl-skerry of the Irishmen’s Isles, and I am not sanguine that exploration will yield favourable results.
The fog from the west and south-west, which enwraps this firth when the northern Fjörðs are quite clear, began to break at eight A.M., and before eleven it had lifted sufficiently to show the beacon and the one big house perched upon the basaltic knob of Papey. There is a report that this feature and the islets around it are gradually rising, and that a sensible difference is observed every thirty years. Gradually to starboard the lower folds of Strandafjöll, stepped like the Esja and Skarðsheiði, and farther off the black curtain of Búlandstindr, frayed at the summit, struggled into sight. It was a most inhospitable-looking region,
“a coast of dreariest continent,
In many a shapeless promontory rent.”